Happy Holidays! As we are nearing the end of another year, I think we need to discuss being bold, making decisions, and keeping resolutions.
So let’s talk about resolutions, since it is that time of year. Intellectually, I completely understand the appeal of making resolutions. To do lists are helpful for focusing on what you want to accomplish and for keeping you on task when there is so much other shiny stuff to look at on the Internet that can derail your best intentions of not procrastinating and really getting whatever it is done this year. Resolutions are also, to me at least, a symbol of optimism that you can actually make the world or yourself (or both) a little better through sheer will and determination. But on the flip side, broken resolutions can fill you with guilt and angst. So is it better to make resolutions and cut yourself slack when you inevitably fall short of perfection? Or is it better to not make resolutions? I don’t have the answer, although I find zen habits rather helpful for living life well and not full of too many lists of things to do.
As for me, I haven’t made any new year’s resolutions for quite a few years now. I might make some this year, who knows. Do you make new year’s resolutions?
But even if you are not into making resolutions for the new year, it is good to resolve to being a person who is bold and willing to make decisions. I was talking with a friend the other day about being the one to make decisions in a group and then read this post from Seth Godin, Just Looking. Sometimes real life and the blogosphere are just in sync; I don’t ask why. So go out there and be bold– actually make a decision. Sitting on the fence doesn’t do you any good and doesn’t move either you or your work or the library forward. Speaking of being bold, check out Engaged Learning’s post, Are You So Bold? Then, go and do whatever you know needs to be done or said that you’ve been putting off. You’ll feel better and it will be easier to be bold the next time you need to be.
So, if you feel like you now need to do something to be bolder in the new year, check out the call for bloggers at Midwinter. If you happen to be going to either ALISE or ALA Midwinter (or even both), do say hello. I’ll be in San Diego for both conferences (probably tweeting and blogging about some of the sessions too). Also, in conference traveling news, check out the TSA Status website to find out the status of the new body scanners at various airports’ checkpoints.
And, because it is that time of year, we must end with a list: check out Lifehacker’s Most Popular Explainers of 2010. We also need something fun, so enjoy a couple of photos of my family’s cats having fun with the wrapping paper…
Cheetah in Wrapping Paper
Fey with Ribbon
…and an awesome video about the Tenth Doctor and Donna because it is so fun that it must be shared.
Happy New Year, dear readers! I hope it is a fantastic year for you. I’ll be back next week with posts from ALISE. Allons-y!
Happy Friday! Today I thought talk a bit about some of the recent tech news. There’s been a lot of interesting and important tech news in the last few days and I just want to highlight a couple of things. And I also want to talk about relaxation because, dear reader, this is my last day on campus before the holiday vacation and I’m ready for relaxing. But first, tech fun!
By now you’ve probably heard about the possibility of Yahoo discontinuing the popular social bookmarking service, delicious.I’ve had a delicious account for years (before you had to have a Yahoo account) and love the interface and usefulness of the service. So I know, it’s annoying and frustrating to have to move your bookmarks. After you freak out about this, check out WebWorkerDaily’s 5 delicious alternatives article or Lifehacker’s post on best bookmarking services.
Luckily I’ve been trying Google Bookmarks for a while so I had somewhere to easily deposit my bookmarks from delicious. I just wish the tags had transferred over too. But I guess this will force me to actually clean up my bookmarks.
In other (good) tech news: About.me is now open to all. About.me is a simple to use splash page where you can link together all your online information. And the pages look fantastic with very little effort. I created a page a while ago. If you want to see an example of a page you can see mine here: about.me/dianakwakimoto. [Note: You may not be able to get to About.me (because of an amazing amount of traffic due to Lifehacker’s article, no doubt). But be patient and try again later because it really is great.]
And now from tech news to relaxation. While many of us talk about relaxing over the holidays, I’d wager that a lot of us will be checking work email and trying to get work stuff done. That’s why I’m sharing this wonderful idea from danah boyd on her email sabbatical. I just love this idea and hope to implement it sometime soon because everyone deserves a true break without worrying about an avalanche of email when they return to work.
And because it is the 17th, the video had to be about Tron Legacy. Check out this great video about the sound editing and soundtrack–lots of fun, pretty stuff.
Enjoy your weekend, read a lot, and relax. I may or may not be back next week with a post, but I’ll definitely be back in the new year. Have a wonderful holiday and very happy new year, dear readers!
Happy Wednesday! First, congratulations to all the San Jose SLIS students who’ve survived another semester. Enjoy your break! I’m completely enjoying break week here at work because I’m getting so much work done. Plus, dear reader, it has given me the chance to write about more lists and fun stuff. So let’s get right into it, shall we?
I don’t care if you think you don’t care about typography, you must go take a look at this post from I Love Typography, Codex type: the Week in Type. This is one of the most beautiful posts and awesome lists I’ve seen in a while. Makes me just want to design a thousand things instead of finishing up retention dossier.
And, yes, it is the season of lists. Lifehacker has another great list: Most popular photography tips, tricks, and hacks of 2010. This is just perfect timing for all those holiday photos that you just know you’ll be taking when you get together with family and friends. Also, you may want to check out Lifehacker’s most popular DIY projects of 2010 before you meet up with your family and friends because you know DIY projects (and tech support) are almost always on the table when you visit family. Or, at least, they are in my family.
Now for something serious that you should read, take to heart, and share with your patrons: Lifehacker’s article on the main reason why you suck at interviews: lack of preparation. I’ve been talking with friends and interns lately a lot about interviewing and careers and so I think this is a very timely article. Plus, the article speaks the truth–prepare for your interviews! Really. I’m not joking. It’s like a presentation–you don’t try to wing it and you do practice. It takes time and sometimes you feel really silly prepping for an interview, but it is worth it. Before I interviewed for my present position, I did a lot of research about the school, the library, the faculty, the tenure process, etc. I probably looked a little silly at the gym studying books on interviewing techniques and statistics on the school while on the elliptical trainer, but it paid off during the interview. I felt confident that I knew what I was talking about and could actually ask intelligent questions. So practice and prepare.
Okay, I’m off my soapbox and think that we must end with a couple of fun bits because it is the holiday season after all.
First: for those living in the Bay Area, Saturn Cafe is now in Berkeley! This is so exciting for those of us addicted to Saturn Cafe’s yummy veggie food, but sadly no longer live close to the original Saturn Cafe in Santa Cruz. Really, you need to go try the Saturn Cafe. Have the nachos, you won’t be sorry.
Second: you know we have to end with a funny video. So here is Simon’s Cat in ‘Santa Claws.’ Even if you’ve seen it before give yourself a 2 minute and 13 second break and watch it again. You’ll smile and smiling is good for you.
Have a great rest of your day. I’ll be back on Friday with more library, tech, and holiday fun. Thanks for reading.
Happy Friday! Can you believe it’s Friday again? Amazing. I’m excited because 1. I think my cold is finally going away and 2. I get to visit the Archive of Recorded Sound at Stanford. I love going to other archives, seeing what the archivists and librarians are doing, and bringing back new insights to use in our archives. Plus, it is getting close to the end of the year and you know what that means, right? Yup, the start of all the wonderful end-of-the-year lists. Yay! So let’s as the good Doctor would say, Allons-y!
Oh, Lifehacker, how I love that I can always count on you for wonderful tips. But, more importantly, I can also count on you to have lists. I like lists a lot and Lifehacker doesn’t disappoint with Most Popular Top 10s of 2010. Seriously, give this article a read and see if there are any great tech tips you missed the first time around.
Moving on from tech tips to design, check out this informative post Design v. Aesthetics. Now it’s no secret that I adore beautiful designs, but I’m definitely in the camp that if it isn’t usable or readable than it isn’t well designed (no matter how pretty it may be). Happy designing!
Talking about design brings me to Bridging the Nerd Gap’s “Why You’re a Huge Nerd.” It’s fantastic. As I tell all my first year students during our first class together: we’re sitting in class on a college campus and have the luxury of higher education. Not only are we all extremely fortunate, we are all geeks and nerds. You’re in college, make peace with that and the next few years will be a lot easier. In college, as in life, it is so much easier to just accept one’s nerdiness/geekiness than trying to hide it. I love this bit of the post:
There’s something innately attractive about somebody who really gives a crap about something….Seeing somebody’s inner nerd come bursting forth is an inspiring thing…”
I couldn’t agree more. Just say no to apathy and yes to being true to your inner nerd and/or geek. And, by the way, just in case you somehow missed it, today is “May the Force Be With Katie Day” or as her mom renamed it, “Wear Star Wars–Share Star Wars.”
Speaking of nerdiness, I absolutely love this (found via Hanna’s tumblr feed and originally from nevver).
formal apology
And, because it is Friday and yes, I’m getting into the holiday spirit, here is a lovely, holiday clip created by Seduff and featuring the tenth Doctor. Enjoy!
Have a wonderful, restful weekend and your weekend assignment, should you choose to accept it (inspired by Bridging the Nerd Gap), is to dig “around in somebody’s head to figure out what kind of nerd they are.” Be nice and share with them what kind of a nerd you are too and then go get a cup of hot cocoa together (’cause it is definitely hot cocoa weather here). I’ll be back next week with more information and random fun.
Happy Wednesday! I’ve been thinking a lot about education lately, probably due to reflecting on my own teaching during the end of this term. I wanted to share some of the most interesting reads and tools I’ve seen lately on the topic of education.
Have you seen edmodo? It’s a way to create private social networking sites for your classes. Since Ning is now charging money, edmodo seems like a good option for educators. The entire look of edmodo is very similar to another large social networking site which should make it feel comfortable to students and edmodo is must more user friendly than most of the learning management systems I’ve seen. If you’ve used edmodo, I’d love to hear about your experiences. I may use it in the next class I teach as I’m always trying to facilitate more interaction and community.
Speaking of education, I highly suggest you read Anna’s post of her responses to questions about unschooling. It’s a fantastic read and will make you ponder (hopefully) your own educational journey and how you want to see education evolve. Like I wrote in a previous post, I firmly believe that there are multiple ways to gain information and create knowledge. Obviously I feel strongly that there is a place for higher education and am hopeful that I can make changes to the process of higher education that will benefit my students. (But going into details of how I envision higher education evolving is best left to another post.)
This post, “Why Design Education Must Change” is a fantastic read. Many of the suggestions for changing design education apply to education in general, in my opinion. For instance, I believe we need to do a better job educating students at all levels in scientific disciplines. And I say this not just because I have a degree in biology and grew up in a house where scientific proofs and logic were held as the standard to which everything was compared. Understanding science is important so you can discern medical flimflam from sound medical advice, figure out whether the statistics in an article are valid or a lot of hogwash, and logically plan and execute studies in the library. I am a huge proponent of a “well-rounded” and broad education, then drilling deeply into one or more areas for your specialties. But that’s just me. Even if you don’t agree, please check out the design education article, it really is fantastic.
I think that is enough seriousness for one blog post, so here is the winner of Unshelved’s Pimp My Bookcart contest. I had to share because University of San Francisco won and the entry is awesome.
Because it is rather dreary here today, I thought we should end with this lovely clip of the tenth Doctor. I don’t know about you, but watching the Doctor in action always makes my day a bit better and less dreary. If nothing else, the Time Lord knows how to give a good “rally the troops” style of speech.
Have a great rest of your Wednesday and I’ll be back soon with more tech and library fun. Allons-y!
Happy Friday! And it is a super-happy Friday on campus because classes are over and once we survive finals week (next week), we have holiday break! That is definitely cause for celebration. So in honor of surviving yet another quarter, let’s talk about time, education, design, and social media.
One seemingly cannot escape hearing about social media and social media marketing on a daily basis. WebWorkerDaily had a great article discussing How much time does social media marketing take? The answer is, of course, it depends on what you are doing and what you want to accomplish. I highly recommend keeping the graphics from this article on hand to explain social media marketing the next time someone brings it up in a meeting. It’s a nice graphic and it reminds people that, while you might not have to “pay” for accounts on a lot of social media sites, you have to invest time.
This discussion of social media marketing brings up another issue that I hear about a lot from my colleagues: how to learn to use social media. I don’t think I’ve quite gotten across the idea that one can’t just read about social media or take a course to understand how to use social media effectively in a library or academic setting. (I also have yet to convince some people that they shouldn’t wait for a journal article to tell you how to use social media; at that point it’s a little late. Go to the blogs and Twitter and everything will be okay.) It’s like trying to explain Twitter–doesn’t really make sense until you sign up and start tweeting with other people.
Design, like understanding social media, is learned by doing and not just reading about it (although studying successful examples is always a good thing too). It’s like archival processing. I can talk to you until my voice gives out about the standards and protocols for processing a collection, but you’ll only be able to truly understand once I sit you down with an unprocessed collection and let you muddle around for a bit. The lovely, tidy picture of archival processing that is written in the textbooks is nothing like the messy, sometimes moldy, collections you encounter in the archives. In all three cases, practice might not make perfect but it is the way you’ll actually be able to do anything useful with what you’ve read.
On that note, there have been some rather excellent posts and discussions lately on education and the necessity of higher education in particular. (But we are not, dear reader, going to contribute more to the messy dialog about the need for graduate level education in library and archival science. At least, not today.) I obviously believe in the value and importance of higher education since I work in academia. But I don’t believe that higher education is the only path, or even the best path, to take for acquiring knowledge in every instance. I find it especially interesting to read about what other people think about the necessity of higher education for careers in emerging and creative fields. I highly recommend this read on Design and Education, if nothing else, you should enjoy the clean design of the website and Harry’s lovely portfolio of work. Also, if you are interested in the process of design, I suggest reading the messiness of design. And when you get to actual design time for your website, check out what your web design says about you. Isn’t design fun?
I guess all I’m really trying to say is don’t be afraid of wandering a bit on your own and muddling through learning new things. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to learn about web design and social media marketing when there are so many awesome people online who share their work and expertise because sharing ideas generates more ideas (as yesterday’s This is Indexed showed us). So get out there and learn something new. Then be nice and share your knowledge and experience with others.
To end, we must have a video. Because Season 5 of the new Doctor Who is out on DVD (and I finally got to watch the first episodes), we need to end with the Doctor. This video is slightly spoiler-y for episode 1, so you have been warned. Enjoy some of the Doctor’s awesomeness.
Have a wonderful rest of your day and relaxing weekend. Don’t get too caught up in the holiday madness–save some time for reading. I’ll be back next week with more fun things to share.
Happy Wednesday and Happy December! Can you believe it is already December? I mean, really, where did this year go? As the year is coming to a close, I thought it might be nice to have a quick round-up of helpful tech for today.
Just to continue the Thanksgiving Day cheer, check out Lifehacker’s great list of 50 Free Apps We’re Most Thankful For. Then start downloading. And yes, I’m well aware that the mobile web is where it’s at, but apps can be fun too.
This Slideshare presentation of Five Ways to Not Suck at PowerPoint is very useful and should be a requirement for all presenters to view. Please, please, please make PowerPoint Presentations that aren’t awful. I’m really hoping some of the presenters at the next conference I go to follow some of this advice because it is so nice to see (and hear) a good presentation (and so painful to sit through a bad one).
Do you have a Google Voice account? Of course you do, dear reader, because you are a savvy technology user. But, maybe you aren’t sure of exactly what you can do with Google Voice. Lifehacker comes to the rescue with a guide of the Most Helpful Ways to Use Google Voice that You’re Not Using.
And just for fun, check out the Hacker’s Guide to Tea. It is definitely tea weather.
And to end, because everyone needs to laugh at least once a day, check out the Vlogbrothers’ outtakes video:
Have a lovely rest of your day and I’ll be back on Friday.
Happy Wednesday! I know it is a day early for a Thanksgiving Day post, but it is never too early to list the things one is thankful for in life. And also, because in the United States tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I fully intend to stay away from all things online in order to engage with my family and friends in real life, I needed to send out this post today. (And yes, I know, I know I can schedule the post to publish on Thanksgiving Day but I’m hoping that other people too will unplug for the day and so the post is being published today.)
I think having a day with family and friends when you remember what you are thankful for in life is a fantastic basis for a holiday. And, to my dear long-time readers, the fact that I feel this way should not come as a surprise given my love of lists which have produced the last two year’s posts on things and people in libraries (and archives) which I am thankful for: Thanksgiving Day post for 2008: librarians and optimism and Thanksgiving Day post for 2009: Giving Thanks for Libraries and Librarians.
So this year, I just want to name five of library/archives-related things I’m thankful for and then let you go and celebrate Thanksgiving. (I’m still thankful for everything I named in previous years too, but didn’t want to include all of that here…again.)
1. San Jose State Library School Interns
I always have to include our interns in any list about library wonderfulness. I don’t know how we get so lucky, but we get fantastic interns. It is a blast to work with engaged library school students and I always learn something new. Plus they are just awesome people and it is nice to have an excuse to reflect on teaching philosophies and teaching methods with interested people. Plus, one of the interns could identify my limited edition John Green bobblehead in my office which was just awesome. And did I mention one of our interns was part of the winning Book Cart Drill Team at the CLA Conference this year? I didn’t? Well, take a look at the winning performance in the following video. Interns=awesomeness.
2. Amazing friends who also just happen to be fabulous archivists
Friends are just one of life’s wonders that make life worth living. I always feel very thankful and very lucky that a couple of my closest friends also happen to be archivists. It is so nice to be able to talk about work and research with people who get what I’m saying. These are the friends who I can count on to respond within minutes to a panicked message about confusing metadata standards and who will make sure I don’t lose myself in the Hollinger boxes down in the archives too long. They are the people I can geek out over archives and library stuff and then turn to talking about other important issues such as the best way to make English muffins or debating whether Eccleston or Tennant was a better Doctor. Bonding over paper cuts, freezing cold archives, and late nights talking about anything and everything make these people the ones I turn to for support (and support them) because they are always there. That’s what friends are for and having some that actually understand respect de fonds and OAIS are just (amazing) bonuses. (And I have amazing friends who are librarians too, but wanted to give a special shout out to my archivist friends because, really, archivists need to get some of love too.)
3. Amazing friends who aren’t in the field, but believe librarians are pretty cool
Obviously I don’t spend all my time in the archives or library (really it’s true) and not all my friends are in the field, but they still think librarians are pretty nifty people. And it is awesome to hear about their research and work in aviculture and veterinary practice, among other things. What can I say? I am blessed to have people who want to talk about books, can have fun being fangirls at author book signings, and understand the awesome appeal of Nerdfighteria.
4. Librarians and archivists who are actually proud of their work and their profession
Okay, so we all know that the economy pretty much is pathetic right now and it is seriously difficult to get a job. I will totally not deny those facts. I won’t argue either with the point that some universities are accepting way too many students for the number of jobs in our fields. (I will however take issue with the people who say that a specialization in archives will be a “hot” job segment. First archives are related to libraries, not a specialization in libraries, and second archivists have just as difficult time finding work as librarians, if not more.) But none of these points are what I really want to talk about in this list about things I’m thankful for.
I am so eternally grateful to those librarians and archivists who are proud of their work and their profession. Really, thank you. I’m always thrilled when I talk with people who are confident enough in their work and selves that they don’t feel the need to apologize for it. I love people who won’t make excuses for what they do or put down the profession. We do important work and should act like it. So thank you to those of you who are positive, realistic and true professionals. It makes me smile and glad to be a part of the profession.
5. You, dear reader
I am so thankful for you, dear reader, for continuing to read what I write and to converse with me about topics in the library-archives-tech field. It is fantastic. I adore that I’m not just throwing my writing into a black hole of nothingness. You make the time and energy it takes to write this blog worthwhile. So give yourself a pat on the back and know that you are appreciated.
And to end, enjoy this lovely, beautiful, and wonderful Doctor Who video, His Name is “The Doctor,” made by one of the best video creators I’ve seen on YouTube (and no, it has nothing to do with Thanksgiving, other than the fact that I’m thankful that both Eccleston and Tennant were the Doctor):
I hope you have a fantastic, restful, wonderful Thanksgiving. I’ll be back next week with more library and tech fun. Thank you, as always, for reading and conversing with me.
Hello, dear readers. I know I’m a bit late in publishing this post. I’m sorry, but I plead illness as my excuse and hopefully you’ll find something in today’s bag of geeky fun useful and that will absolve me from the horror of not posting on a Friday. Anyway, as the good doctor would say, Allons-y!
It’s probably fairly obvious by now, but I have a weakness for good design and lovely typography. I’m, not surprisingly, very happy with Smashing Magazine lately for all their wonderful resources on typography, especially this round-up of 100 educational resources, tools and techniques for web typography. Get ready to drool if you have an appreciation for well-designed fonts and layouts.
Speaking of fonts, something else that is fun to play with is WhatFontis.com. Upload an image of a font you can’t identify and (with any luck) WhatFontis will be able to identify it for you. Yes, I know, this could be very, very bad because you might spend hours playing with this site. Don’t say I haven’t warned you.
In other useful, geeky news, check out this article from The Atlantic on taking care of your personal archives. What can I say? I get excited whenever an interview with an archivist gets published in something other than Archival Outlook. Read it and then get cracking on backing-up, remounting, and otherwise taking care of your personal archives.
In other super-important news, today is the 12th Annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance. Please go over to the Future Feminist Librarian-Activist’s site and read Anna’s thoughtful post for today.
In other, not nearly as important, but good for some weekend relaxation and enjoyment news, I have to share with you Joy the Baker’s vegan pumpkin walnut bread recipe. It is superb and makes two giant loaves of bread–perfect for when you find out your new intern is vegan and none of your standard baking recipes are anywhere close to being vegan (just saying). Also, just on the off chance you missed it last week, here’s a link to Stephen Abram’s Geek cred post.
And if you missed part 1 of John Green’s explanation of the French Revolution, or want to see parts 2 & 3, head over to Hanna’s blog where she has posted all of them.
As for me, my pick for a video this week is John Green’s video about his latest trip to Amsterdam because I know a lot of people will be traveling soon for Thanksgiving and will probably be able to empathize with John’s experiences with airports and flights. Enjoy.
Have a lovely weekend, rest, relax, and read (and don’t catch a cold; it’s no fun). See you next week for more tech, library, and archival fun!
Happy Wednesday! I hope your day is going well because, to be truthful, the last few Wednesdays around my neck of the woods have been not very nice. Apparently, according to a friend, Wednesdays must be my good karma blackout days (kind of like frequent flier mile blackout days) since honestly, I just haven’t been able to catch a break. But I’m hoping today will be better and thought I’d share some thoughts in order to solicit some feedback on discourses and conversations because conversation always makes the day better. (And if you are only reading The Waki Librarian for libraries and technology, not to worry, we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled, nerdy fun on Friday.)
So this idea for a post came about during a two hour webinar I was recently in. And, for the record, I agree with everyone on Twitter who tweeted that webinar is a horrible word. It is. But, moving on, during the conversation one of the people made an argument that academic discourse is completely separate from discourse that occurs via Twitter, blogs, and other assorted social media. Furthermore, he said that is how it should be. Now, obviously, for anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time probably can tell, this irked me. So I thought, hey, I’ll see what other people have to say about this matter.
For me, yes, there are differences between academic discourse and professional discourse that occurs via social media, but that doesn’t mean that there can’t and shouldn’t be overlap between the two discourses. I’m an academic and do quite a bit of research and writing in the formal, traditional academic model. It’s a very important discourse. Research is important for producing the kind of quality evidence available to use as a basis for decision-making and to further develop theory and models in our field. It is important to be able to write your results up in an article in such a way that it withstands peer-review and can be used as a credible source. No one, I think, would deny that. But it doesn’t do one lick of good just sitting in an article that few people will ever read–especially in our field which is an applied, practical, professional field. Keeping an academic discourse cloistered is silly and inhibits good ideas from spreading. I adore the intellectual stimulation of academia (and the excuse to do research), but I really don’t enjoy the concept (and practice) of academia as a world and conversation set apart from every other conversation happening in our field.
At this point, one ignores conversations facilitated by social media at one’s peril. Many bloggers, especially in the information science field, write amazingly thoughtful posts about current practice and research. I love hearing about new research articles from various blog and Twitter feeds. I have more conversations (on the whole) via this non-academic discourse than I have in academic discourses. And it is a wonderful feeling to be a part of a larger, vibrant librarian and archivist community and to learn from so many awesome people. I think the Web 2.0, social media, whatever new buzzword you want to use, community conversations can and should then influence academic discourses and research, especially in the realm of applications of technology and teaching which is one of my areas of interest. Also, it would be an error to ignore the previously cloistered academic conversations that are now coming to the web via open access projects, digital humanities projects and numerous public history projects. It’s a great big hodgepodge of overlapping, conflicting, synergistic, and even inspiring conversations happening every day online. (It makes my postmodernist, poststructuralist heart happy. Just think of all the dynamic, fluctuating discourses and evolving language usage to study!)
So what conversations interest you? What do you think about the academic and professional discourse divides? How do you integrate the various aspects of your research and practice in your work and life?
I promise, I’m off my soapbox now, but I’d really love to hear how you think the various conversations in our field interrelate, or should interrelate. I’d love to continue the conversation. And now, since we’ve been talking so much about conversations, education, and learning from each other, I thought it only appropriate to leave you with the first installment of the Vlogbrothers’ educational video week. Enjoy John Green discussing the French Revolution (I love that he says “competing historical narratives” during the introduction–yes I am that big of a nerd, enjoy the video anyway.)
I’ll be back on Friday with our regular assortment of technology and library fun.
